The Manitowoc pilot. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1859-1932, 1887-10-13
Along in November late-about the

| giving on the side where they know
what Thanksgiving means-we started
| out on buffalo hunt. There was en-
! ough to eat, such as it was, for a
! month in the cabins, and fuel enough
| to keep them warm; and by that time
we thought work might begin again
| Anyway, we'd have our meat for the
rest of the winter.
Well, it's no use to go over that. It
| wasn't a pleasure trip. We weren't
| out for the fun of killing. We camped
| out at night and rode and shot and
| dressed game by day, and did not
stary'e nor quite freeze to death; and
we got back again onto the plains
along in December.
l wanted to push through and get
home, but the horses were played out;
| tie level we Just crawled along. We
| had not heard a word since we started,
| and | was pretty anxious-Molly was
not well when l left her; but there was
no choice about it. | had to 90; the
a doctor in the town, and Clayton had
| a good horse, and we had to do about
| that as we had done about everything
elSt-ldht our CudUccS.
Ishan't forget that day. Along in
| the middle of the morning a norther
began to blow. 1t did not snow, al
though the sky thickened up with
gray, woolly-looking clouds, low down
and threatening. You never felt
norther? A wind that goes through
| your bones, that clutches your heart
| and stops your brain, that breaks you
| up, body and soul. You don't know
anything about cold till you've felt
one. If there is such thing as
| frozen hell that's where these winds
come from. 1t isn't pure cold, it's
ghost cold, and all the Internal regions
let loose, yelling and laundering up in
the awful emptiness over your head
and around you.
Love the prairies? Well, you can
love them good deal better on paper
than anywhere else. But there's a
fascination about them, somehow. It's
like the sea. A man that's got his
living on them for ten years is fit for
| nothing else in Gods world. He
can't get away. He's spoiled for
everything else under heaven. He's
got to have the sky and chance to
breathe. It's about all there is to get,
better than he can have anywhere
else; but it's sure fact that so much
he's got to have, whatever else gets
left. It's like poem, maybe-'I
amt much on rhyme" myself-driving
across them in warm weather;
horses fresh and well fed, with big
tent and spring cots for camping and
a supply wagon with everything you
| can think of but ice, and maybe that;
all the world a-ripple with summer
green; the south wind surging like
warm ocean, and the sky blue and
soft and arching away up to the
great wide throne. That's one thing.
To 60 trailing along, horses dead
beat and half-starved, pulling big
wagon through sloughs up to the axles
or over frozen ruts that wiring every
bolt in the concern and every bone in
your body; with mile after mile of dead
grass stretching out to the edge of the
world; with buzzards swinging up out
of nowhere, more like something in
fernal than any decent live thing; with
coyotes yelping and crying all night
| that's another thing, and the kind that
doesn't get talked about much. Per-
haps you remember that item IN last
winters newspapers, a half-dozen
lines or so-two families frozen in a
Texas norther, horse, dogs, and all,
just as they stood.
That night we went into camp ten
miles from home. There was a ravine
and plenty of brush, and the horses
were ready to drop in their tracks,
and that last ten miles was one of the
things that couldn't be done. So we
got our fires made and our horses fed
and sheltered as well as we could, and
put some heart into ourselves with
buffalo steak and hot coffee; and the
rest of them packed themselves into the
wagon. Some one had to stand guard
and keep the fires going, and / took
the contract.
1t wasn't a dark night. There was
a goodish bit of a moon behind the
clouds, and it made q gray kind of
light over everything. We were at
| the bottom of Il dry canon that ran
east and west, and the wind did not
reach us. 1t screeched and screamed
over our heads, and through it all there
was kind of moaning roar, as if we
| were at the bottom of tide as deep as
| the stars are high. | got to thinking
| about old times away back, of one
Sunday night just before we were
| married. l had gone East little
sooner than we expected and had to
wait for her things to be finished. We
went to church that night A keen,
| crisp, still night it was, when the
sleigh-runners squeaked on the snow
and the moonlight traced the shadows
| of the elms on the white ground as if
they had been put in black drawing.
| The church was warm and bright, and
they hadn't taken down the Christ
| mas greens yet, SO the air was full of
| the smell of them that spicy, haunt
| ing smell, that seems as if il came
| somehow from world before this. 1t
| was years since | had smelled it,
and | sat and listened to the music
| and looked at the people, with their
comfortable clothing and faces that
| were cheerful, not worn and wrinkled
with care and weather. Molly was an
| awfully pretty girl in those DAYS; all
pink and white like an apple blossom,
somehow. And fighting to keep
awake out there in the heart of Kan
sas prairie | got to thinking about her
1 dS Sio was tucu no" sue nau
| changed. Skin the color of tanned
leather now, and that wild, hungry look
in her blue eyes, as if they were always
staring into the dark for something
| that frightened her. And both her
children dead, and not even spray
of the pine she loved so, nor breath
of music; nothing but a dirt floor and
log walls that did all that was ex-
pected of them if they kept the weather
| out.
Somebody hailed over the top of the
| bluff.
What camps that?"
kenyon and mates"
Il lowed it was" as"-scrambling down
the sides of the gulch on his sure
footed mule-''You KenyonP News
for you. A kid up to your ranch 10
| daus old ALI hands doing we'll YES